Month: September 2008

The more I think about the $700 million ballout proposed by the Bush adminisration, the more I believe that it needs some major changes to be remotely acceptable.

First of all, under no circumstances should there be no oversight of this bailout program. Meeting with Congress twice a year is not acceptable.

Second, there should be major catches to qualify for this program. For example if a company feels it needs to participate, then the CEO certainly shouldn’t be paid a huge salary for the honor of getting a government bailout. The companies should submit to strict regulations on how they use the bailout money to rebuild their companies.

Third, I think that any company that agrees to the bailout should be required to give a significant portion of future profits for the next 15 years to a special fund that can only be used to first payoff the bailout program and then once that is done, put towards the U.S government debt.

Basically I want to make this bailout program capable of paying for itself in a short period of time, the U.S Governent debt paid down a little bit, and most importantly make it hard for companies to apply for this bailout. If you make it hard to apply for, only those companies who really need the bailout will get it. Then they will be forced to repay taxpayers for their sheer idiocy.

I was unable to watch the Patriots/Chiefs game live due to other plans, so I set my DVR to record the game. My intentions were to not watch or read anything about the game until I got home, so I could watch the game oblivious to the final score. While I was out, I pulled out my iPhone to catch up on a few feeds in Google Reader. In today’s connected age, it is pretty hard to remain completely isolated and I unfortunately stumbled across something I prayed I never read:

“Tom Brady leaves game with knee injury.”

With those words, it is almost certain Brady will miss significant time, if not (gulp) the whole season.

I watched the game when I returned home and the horror of watching the video of Brady’s injury etched itself into my mind.

Being a Patriots fan since the early 1990s, I know how life is like without a good quarterback. Bledsoe resurrected the franchise, but Brady is the one who took it to another level. Since Brady took over Bledsoe, he has started every single game. That is right, every game since September 2001. Now next week will almost certainly break that streak.

I will hold out hope that the injury isn’t as bad as it looked. Maybe Belicheck can completely reinvent the way the Patriots have played football the past 7+ years. Maybe Matt Cassell can pull off a poor man’s impression of Brady taking over for Bledsoe. Maybe a team that had a lackluster training camp can put it together and play the best Patriot team football yet.

That is a whole lot of maybe’s that we didn’t have a few hours ago. Suddenly a bright season turns dark and gloomy.